


Catch a Ride

by onlylonely



Category: Junji Ito, Tomie - All Media Types, 双一の勝手な呪い | Souichi no Katte na Noroi (Manga)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-18
Updated: 2019-02-18
Packaged: 2019-10-30 20:54:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17836016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onlylonely/pseuds/onlylonely
Summary: On the last train ride out of town on a quiet summer night, Tomie Kawakami reflects on her time in Fukuzawa and its most annoying inhabitant. Crack ship drabble (Souichi/Tomie).





	Catch a Ride

**Author's Note:**

> Posted elsewhere in October for Halloween comes another story starring one of my favorite crack ships. Don't worry, an update to Souichi's Guide is still coming, but I wanted to get a feel for Souichi's and Tomie's voices a little bit more.

“You’re still waiting for a knight in shining armor to steal you against your will.”  
\- Everything but the Girl, “Frost and Fire” (1984)

 

* * *

 

The sun was setting on the train station when the young woman approached it. Brilliant oranges had mingled with the viridescent trees of Fukuzawa, birds cawing to each of their scattered number throughout the forest, as well as the gentle hum of cicadas in the twilight air. It almost felt like being part of one of those European watercolors that she has dim memories of looking at in a museum somewhere from what feels like several lifetimes ago now.

Of course, for Tomie Kawakami, that statement was more literal than it would be for most.

Her presence in those portraits - if she could somehow ever manage an artist to truly capture her essence without it blowing up in her face - would have elevated them into something she could recall in vivid detail, she’s sure of it. Even in this dump of a town Tomie’s marks have spared no expense on her appearance. Her crimson blouse goes well with her milk white skirt and ink black high heels, items whose prices she hadn’t even bothered to look at as she gestured for her prey’s wallets, if she does say so herself. But the unusually small suitcase next to her is a testament to just how much of a mistake it’d been to regenerate herself a few months ago here. If her other selves could be here she’s sure they’d be laughing how little name brands there are to be found. She can feel her perfectly plump lips scrunch into a frown involuntarily at the imaginary criticism, decisive and pointedly sharp as if they were the countless physical blows she’s endured before settling again into an ever ready smirk.

That’s what Tomie’s here for after all, to get out of Fukuzawa and leave it as just another dusty, half-remembered thing at the corner of her vast consciousness. This place doesn’t matter and its people almost certainly don’t. She hates the girls with bushy eyebrows and men with sloping foreheads (products of relationships borne out of being disconnected with the rest of the world for far too long, she thinks to herself wryly), their superstitious adherence to half understood rituals that make it impossible to travel to certain parts of their hovel without earning her the hateful eye of spirits who certainly don’t approve of her nature.

But when had Tomie ever cared for the opinion of a tree or rock?

Pulling back her sleeve, she glances down at the watch on her wrist. 4:45. Thirty minutes later than the promised arrival time and no updates that she can see on the digital display above her head. Time, as Tomie’s come to understand, has little meaning here and everything seems to run in perpetual slow motion. She doesn’t miss the volume of people in them, but her brief journey here has made her more appreciative than ever of cities. There she can melt away into crowds and leave her poor sap of the week behind. Nor does she have to be mindful of accidentally setting foot onto a shrine and disintegrating away on the spot. The concrete jungles are her home; their wealth and sin are hers for the taking. What happens in a week here occurs in a day outside of Fukuzawa’s bubble.

“Skipping town by train, huh? How cliche can you get?”

The high-pitched, whiny voice is familiar to Tomie. She doesn’t even have to turn around to know who its owner is.

“Not my fault your economy still can’t find its way out of the Lost Decade. Is there a single adult here that makes above 5 million yen a year?”

The voice seems determined, as it always is, to not let her be. She doesn’t even bat an eyelash when the scrawny kid circles around her, eyeing her up and down as he clicks his teeth noisily against the nails jutting out of his mouth. Souichi Tsujii is one of the most annoying men Tomie’s ever met, another thing to to mark down on her long list of complaints about the occult-obsessed freak’s backyard. He’d only left her alone once since she found herself finally able to walk again, when she’d managed to stumble her way onto the main roads leading back to town that night. Tsujii hadn’t even bothered to hide his leer when he’d asked introduced himself and asked what a naked woman was doing all on her lonesome near the woods.

The spell he’d tried to use to peer into her mind had been anemically weak; all she’d had to do was push back just a little, to show him what she was really like in her heart of hearts, to send the wide-eyed young man scrambling away from her in terror, girlishly screeching as he disappeared into the distance. The childish arrogance of it all had pissed her off the most, really. To try magic in the first place he must have had some idea of what she was and yet he had seemingly expected no push back. That either meant that he was the strongest being in the area (something she’d very much doubted) or was so used to having easy prey that he was unused to feeling insignificant. But Tomie had been more than happy to put another man in his place. She’d expected their chance encounter to be the end of it.

Tomie wasn’t often wrong in judging others’ character, but this time she had been.

Whether it was on a date with the local baker’s boy or flirting with a jeweler at the bazaar on the weekends into giving her something for free, she always managed to see him somewhere out of the corner of her eye, muttering to himself and scribbling away furiously in a small leather bound journal. He was the constant unwanted third wheel to anything Tomie found herself wanting to do. Somehow, some way, Tsujii would follow her.

“Please. They still haven’t fixed the statue of the idiot who built this place from five years back when half the guys in the town got drunk at the coming-of-age ceremony. No one knows it was my brother and his friends who vandalized it, y’know. Heh…”

She straightens ever so slightly at the mention of Tsujii’s brother. After all, despite their initial encounter, she’d never done anything around him that would get him to suspect she was anything more than a lowly wandering ghost, hoping he’d chalk up their initial meeting as nothing more than an overreaction based on the time they’d met when his nerves had gotten the better of him his persistence on the issue had forced her hand. She’d learned his name, his school, who his parents and siblings were - it’d all been an effort to simply get him to leave her alone but to no avail. The Tsujiis, with the exception of their estranged young son, were so plain that it  **hurt**. Even her usual charms hadn’t been able to break through the wall of polite idiocy that his brother Kouichi exuded like a broken steam pipe.

“All the more reason to get out of here then. What’re you here for? To see me off?” Tomie can feel the humor creeping into her voice as she puts a hand to her mouth and closes her eyes, her laugh as gentle as a bell. “Now who’s talking cliches, hm, Souichi?”

Her teasing earns her nothing but the scorn of the young man, his unironed t-shirt and shorts somehow appearing as if they grew even more wrinkled to match his quickly souring mood. Though the picture of him fleeing from her in terror is present in her mind’s eye, weeks of hiding in her shadow has made Tsujii much bolder now. Tomie can hear the grinding of his teeth against the metal in his mouth as he darts over to her and wags a finger in her face. His bravery, or stupidity, is certainly impressive. She can at least credit him with that much.

“Wha- what’re you talking about?! Me? See  _you_  off? As if I’d stoop that low… No. I just want to make sure you get the hell out of here with my own two eyes.”

“You’ll get your wish if the damned train arrives this century. Don’t worry; I’ll be out of your shanty town in no time.”

For a moment, neither of them blinks. Tomie’s clear, gray eyes bore into the glaring dark brown of her unwanted tag along. They stand only a few centimeters apart from one another and Tomie waits patiently for him to retract the offending digit. She almost wants to reach forward and bite it right off of his hand but stops herself. Not only would it cause a scene if the train were to arrive but fingers aren’t particularly delicious (indeed, she isn’t fond of human at all). Eventually after what seems like an eternity their standoff ends and Souichi folds his arms at his sides and turns away from her.

“Yeah. You do that.”

Perhaps it’s the fact that he’s annoyed her for so long that she wants to return the favor but Tomie finds she can’t help but walking towards him and doing her own once over. She doesn’t even bother to hide her grin when he involuntarily flinches away from her and tries to look anywhere but her as she adjusts her purse’s strap. So this is the kind of game he wants to play? Be a pest for as long as she’s been in Fukuzawa, give her an interrogation, and then simply try to meekly act as if he hadn’t been the one at fault for all of this? Souichi Tsujii is sorely mistaken if he thinks that he can get out of this without some compensation for doing all of this at her expense, that’s for certain.

“Why do you hate me?”

“...”

“I asked you a question.”

He glances furtively at her before looking out across the train tracks towards the opposite side of the station. “Who wouldn’t?”

“Plenty of people, as I’m sure you’ve noticed by now. Everyone loves me.”

“I’m not the most popular guy-”

“Quelle surprise, monsieur Tsujii!” she brings her hand back to her mouth again as she gives him a mock expression of shock. “I hadn’t noticed you never talking to anyone but yourself before…” Souichi doesn’t even bother with her barb, instead just barreling forward on whatever line of thought has dragged him out here on what had once been a pleasant evening.

“-and even I know that whatever you are, it’s not human. I wonder what kind of monster it takes to scare the demons around here from parading around at night, heh…”

Tomie blinks for a moment before shaking her head. That’s what all this has been about? The wannabe  _onmyoji_  is angry that his monstrous ‘friends’ don’t want to come out and play with him anymore? Utterly pathetic. Not that she’d expected anything less of him.

“Me? I’m Tomie.”

“Yeah, yeah. I know. You tell that to every moron who looks your way. Not my fault everyone here can’t think with their head. Uh, well, you know… the one up here,” Souichi says, tapping the side of his own forehead momentarily. “Point is, you’re cramping my style. How’m I supposed to be the number one occultist in town when you’re making it so that no one pays attention to my curses?!”

“...You’ve been trying to do what?”

Souichi spits out the nails he’d been holding in his mouth, stuffing them into his pockets before rounding on her.

“Cursing. You know, putting hexes on people so that they always lose their keys or enchanting ice cream to change different flavors every time someone licks the cone.”

“...”

“It, uh, sounded better before I said it out loud, alright? But you’re putting me out of business.”

Tsujii, just as she thought when they first met, is a child. There is no comparison between the two of them. Her gaze can ensnare any man and a kiss of hers can have them moaning for years afterwards begging for her to return to them. She’s experienced more loss and returned suffering twofold more than he ever will. He’s an arrogant idiot without any of the skills she possesses to back that attitude up. Souichi isn’t even fit to be the dirt she occasionally scrapes off of her shoes.

All these thoughts are ones that Tomie would have liked to tell him if it were not for the fact that she can see now his gaze has moved behind her now and before she can turn around herself to see what it is he’s staring at, she can feel a strong arm take hers in its grasp.

“You Tomie Kawakami?”

The voice is a gruff drawl, almost like it’s been dragged over sandpaper for years. As she turns to try and catch a glimpse of its owner she feels a sharp jerk as the man continues to hold her in place. The callouses she can feel raking her skin are proof enough that she’ll have to play along for the time being.

“I am.”

“Good. Glad the punk I beat the snot out of had it right then.”

In a moment the hand gripping her slackens and she immediately turns around to face the person who’d dared manhandle her. Despite his tone of voice, she’s surprised at how young he seems. His stony, chiseled features compete with a stern expression on his youthful looking face and she doesn’t have to strain her eyes too hard to catch the rippling muscle underneath the thin wife beater he’s wearing. Were he a little more rich (and he’s decidedly not judging by the somewhat haggard looking slacks and work boots he’s wearing), he might even be her type.

“Beat up? Well… that’s no good, is it? Certainly not the kind of thing the police would want to hear and I’m sure you wouldn’t care for them to know you’d laid hands on a woman you didn’t know either.”

“We both know you’ve got a reputation and I doubt they’d give a shit about some whore who gets what’s coming to her.”

A calm settles over Tomie then. Despite his attitude, there isn’t anything he can do to her that hasn’t already been done to her before. By now, she’s had every object that can maim someone sink into her, every blunt object thrown or swung in her direction, and had just about every fate a person could endure thrust upon her. Whatever has caused him to seek her out it will be over with soon and he’ll be just another loser who spent the rest of his life in prison because he couldn’t contain the evil she’d managed to expose that lurked in his heart.

“To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit? I’m guessing it isn’t going to be a nice stroll through the woods after a dinner date.”

“Does the name ‘Ena Amachi’ mean anything to ya?”

“Hm…” Tomie puts a finger along the side of her head, frowning exaggeratedly as she looks at the ground. “Can’t say that it does. Should it?”

“Let’s try someone else then. How about ‘Goro Yoshiro’?”

Dimly in the back of her mind, Tomie gets a brief flash of a pimple-covered nerd with glasses several times too large for his nose to support them and a terrible comb over before it fades as quickly as it came to her. Out of all the lousy men to pick from in Fukuzawa, he’d probably been among the ones she’d rejected out of principle even after flirting with him a bit. Though Tomie had to admit sometimes it was simply fun to watch men squirm in her presence and that time had been no different.

“Sure. What’s he to you?”

“To me? Nothin’. I’m Fumihiro Amachi, though, and Ena is my sister. Goro was her boyfriend.”

Oh.

 _This_  song and dance again.

“I didn’t even go on a-”

The smack that rings out across the station bounces off of the tracks as Tomie feels her legs give out from under her, forcing her to the ground. Even if it’s temporary, the first blow is always the worst part, and she can feel her eyes beginning to involuntarily water as she looks up warily to her attacker. Just as she suspected the expression he bears is as hard as a diamond.

“He broke up with her the afternoon you two talked. Said he couldn’t stand being in a relationship with someone who looked so plain anymore after he’d seen ‘divinity.’ Can’t say I can see what the big deal is.”

There is no sense of self-preservation left in her anymore. Tomie has long since stopped caring on when or where she meets her end at any given time. The hard, concrete pavement beneath her is a familiar feeling as the angry man above her is. Everything that has happened will happen again.

“Ah, I remember now.”

She really doesn’t, but now this bastard has had the audacity to lay his hands on her… she’ll get her own licks in.

“He was easy to wrap around my finger. Doubt he’d ever had someone like me talk to him before. He said all sorts of horrible things about Ena, like her breath smelled like octopus all the time and that she was too flat-chested, and she didn’t shave in the right places. You might think I’m cruel, but is it any worse than someone who’d speak about someone behind their back like that?”

Of all the responses she expects from him, Fumihiro laughing isn’t one of them. He peers down at her, a sneer big enough to match one of her own as he grips the front of her blouse to pull her face to face.

“Heard from other people in town you told tall tales better than that. Might want to actually get to know the people you’re spreading lies about before you mouth off.”

“Oh? Why’s that?”

“My sister ain’t so little.”

Tomie is about to respond when a small squeak comes from somewhere off to the side from either of them. In all the commotion that’s happened, she’s completely forgotten that Souichi is only standing meters away from them. Looking down at Tomie for a moment, Fumihiro lets her go as he begins to slowly stride over to the younger man. A dozen thoughts fly through Tomie’s mind, the first of which is beating a retreat, but she quickly nixes it on the grounds that if he were willing enough to raise a hand against her in a public place then there’s no guarantee of what he’d do in private if he caught her. Dying isn’t an obstacle, but it’s not painless either.

“Didn’t see ya there. Not gonna tell anyone about this, are ya?”

Tsujii looks as if he’s been caught in the headlights of an oncoming car, his entire body shaking and he falls flat onto his ass, scooting away from Fumihiro across the ground.

“I d-don’t know her at all. I was j-j-just trying to catch the train.”

“Guys who have nothin’ to hide look at other people. You ain’t lookin’ at me when ya tell me that.”

“B-believe me, I don’t give a damn-”

In a moment Fumihiro has hoisted Souichi up from the ground and places him on his feet. Taking the time to brush off the dirt that’s managed to cover him after his fall Fumihiro looks down his nose at the shaking shut in.

“Asked ya a question. Answer it, please.”

“N-n-n-o! Of c-c-course not!” Souichi yelps, wincing instinctively as Fumihiro leans in.

“Don’t think I believe ya. Know why?”

“W-why?”

“‘Cause she ain’t the only one who’s a liar. Heard from everyone I talked to that you follow her ‘round like some kinda guard dog. Or, I guess, a lapdog’s more like it, huh?”

It happens in only an instant. A hand shoots out from Fumihiro’s side and connects with Souichi’s gut. In a moment, Tomie’s erstwhile tormentor is on the ground, heaving sick onto the pavement around him, wheezing all the while. Somehow Tsujii manages to look even more pathetic than normal as he lays there face first in his own vomit.

“Be a good boy and stay down while I take care of this.”

With the only witness clutching his sides Fumihiro’s gaze returns to her. It’s there in his eyes; she’s become an expert at spotting it by now. Murderous intent pours out of the man as he stomps across the small distance between them. Tomie was born again in Fukuzawa and she will die in it. Suddenly Tomie feels very tired. The only thing that’s even going to be remotely exciting about any of this is how he’ll do her in.

She receives her answer in the form of the shaking tracks and a whistle in the distance.

“What a shame. Local broad takes an unfortunate fall onto the tracks when trying to skip out on all the broken hearts she’d tried to leave behind. Don’t worry: obituary’ll at least say somethin’ nice, I’ll make sure of it. My old man runs the paper.”

Tomie barely struggles as she can feel herself being hoisted up by the collar and dragged towards her latest impending death. Or, at least, that’s how she expects it to go. But just as she didn’t expect to waylaid on her way out, what comes next is just as much of a shock.

Souichi is sitting up now, face dripping with puke, and his eyes almost emitting a fire that she didn’t think he was capable of. She watches in fascination as he reaches into the pocket he placed his nails into earlier as he pulls out a small black satchel. Wordlessly he violently throws it open and inside Tomie can see several small, blank dolls along with compartments stuffed with miniature clothes. Casting his gaze up for only a moment, she can see him wordlessly pull out a poorly sewn humanoid figure and searching through the thin pouches.

“You ain’t that much of a dumb fuck to try and stop me now, are ya? Not after everything?”

As Tomie watches she notices something: the doll is beginning, strangely, to look like Fumihiro all the way from his white wife beater to the brown pants he’s wearing. Even if her attacker hasn’t realized it, Tomie knows that the situation has changed. In a moment the incompetent child who tried to uncover her secrets is himself a mystery.

“You should’ve let me get out of here,” Tsujii hisses, his voice barely above a whisper, though whether for dramatic effect or still being out of breath she can’t say. “You’re just like all those assholes in school who think they can shove me around. Well, guess what? I don’t need to be on some stupid sports team and do all those multi kilometer runs to show you you picked the wrong guy to wail on. Hehehe…”

Holding up this makeshift fetish, Souichi gingerly stands to his feet. What Fumihiro says in response Tomie can’t make out as the at last approaching train signals its presence once more. If Souichi had heard him or not it doesn’t seem to matter. Jerking his talisman forward, Tomie watches as Fumihiro pauses for a moment before being wildly knocked off of his feet. Tsujii doesn’t miss a beat and it seems as if he’s been replaced with someone with a wholly different personality. Gone is the scared wimp who was cowering before his bully a few minutes ago and in his place is a maliciously grinning imp waiting to torment his victim.

“What was tha-?!”

Before Fumihiro can even finish his sentence, Souichi shoves the doll violently through the air and suddenly stops. The resounding smack from Fumihiro’s head hitting the landing reverberates all around them.

“Thought about cursing you, you know. Making your fingernails never stop growing, your eyes shriveling up into dust, things like that… but I figured this was better. Not so tough when I can do whatever I want to you. Kind of pathetic, right?”

Souichi looks at Tomie and for once in her life she has no snappy retort. She simply blinks at her companion before he shakes his head and turns back to their mutual enemy.

“You’re just like everyone else, always telling me I’ll never go anywhere, won’t be able to do anything. Well, guess what? I’ve got powers you haven’t even dreamed of - friends who’d make you cry yourself to sleep every night just knowing they’re lurking in the shadows just always out of sight. If you knew what I know… you’d go mad.”

The young man who’d only just minutes ago been ready to cast Tomie off to another untimely demise lay before her, howling in agony as Souichi randomly twisted parts on his voodoo doll, pleas for mercy washing into sobbing. There’s a rattling all around them now. Tomie can see the light in the distance and the blaring of its horn once more. She gets up then, dusting the bottom of her skirt off before clearing her throat quietly.

“Can that thing… do whatever you want?” Tomie asks.

“Yup. Pretty bad ass, huh?” Tsujii casts another glance to her, shooting her a crooked grin.

“Push him onto the tracks.”

For a moment, it seems as if the world itself stops as Souichi pauses with his torture, almost dropping Fumihiro’s double. Even the prone man himself looks up at Tomie, tears streaming from his horrified face.

“That’s... pretty hardcore.”

“Do it. Why not? What’s his life worth to you?”

Souichi’s lips are pursed together so tightly that they’ve totally melded with his gaunt skin. His hands look like they’re shaking; all the bravado from moments ago vanished as he looks down at the bully before them and back to her. In this instant it’s clear to her what has to be done.

“I- I’m not sure if I’ve got it in me to… to do that. I just wanted to rough him up, not kill him.”

Tomie sashays over to the young man, hips swaying as she wraps an arm around his shoulders. She can feel him instantly tense as she presses her bosom into his arm, leaning in as she tickles his ear with her breath.

“If you don’t think you can do it, then let’s do it together, hm? I’ve got plenty of courage for the both of us.”

Souichi’s hand wavers for only a moment before she can feel the Fumihiro replica shoved towards her. The young man’s breath is shallow again, though now she’s totally unsure if it’s her proximity to him or genuine nerves that’s causing him to short circuit. Grabbing the black magic enthusiast’s hands in her own, they throw the doll away from them.

It happens all at once.

Fumihiro flies away from them, screaming as he’s launched into the air just as the train pulls in, his body tearing on impact. Viscera sprays everywhere as passengers scream and she can hear a muffled yell of surprise from the conductor through the metal and glass. Gore is slick on the tracks, pieces falling from the front of the train as if they’d thrown an overripe tomato at it. Next to her Souichi’s breathing is absolutely haggard and short.  
  
Moving away from him, Tomie hurries towards the edge of the platform just in time to scoop up the doll that Souichi had made before it falls over and becomes police evidence. She’s not going to jail, not here, not ever even if they could catch her.

Tsujii looks away from the scene of their crime and meets her gaze. He looks like he’s in shell shock at what they’ve done. She supposes that in hindsight maybe she should’ve eased him into it more gently, but they’d been working on a time limit. Oh well. No matter. What was done was done. People have already begun crowding around them, piling out of the train’s cars to get a better look at the ‘tragedy’ that just occurred.

“Souichi… maybe I was wrong about you.”

“You were?”

It’s true. At the very least, the young man whom she’d thought was a hopeless nuisance piqued her interest today. In all the places she’s been to she hasn’t encountered many who can do what he did. Right now, before Tomie is raw untapped potential, and if he could do what he did with only a fraction of what was available to him then things around Fukuzawa might not be so boring after all.

“It’s not often, of course. You were holding back before. Why?”

The grim looking teenager folds his arms once more and turns away from her, looking down at his feet.

“I guess… sometimes I just need the right push. It’s… it’s hard to pull that kind of thing off without it blowing up in my face.”

Tomie knows what she has to do. Reaching out, she gently gestures with the doll towards him. He takes it from her, never wavering with his untrusting expression through his dark-ringed eyes.

“What’s it matter to you? Why did you want me to… to get rid of that guy so badly?”

“Think of it like a test.” Like hell it was, but Tomie has always been good at improvising things on the fly. It’s one of her most special talents, she likes to think. “You passed. Congratulations.”

“...Huh?”

“I wanted to see if there was something more to you after all. Looks like I was right.”

Tomie closes the gap between and she leans forward to plant a kiss on his cheek. Tsujii’s face instantly heats at the contact, reddening like she’d stung him, and standing out even more than it would for most others given his chalky complexion. She has no idea where things are headed and, deep down, on some level she’s excited. More excited than she’s been in a long, long time. If she has to put out to see where things lead... well, it won’t be the first or last time she’s had to turn tricks to get what she wants.

“Let’s go paint the town red.”

Grabbing him by his free hand, Tomie drags Souichi out of Fukuzawa’s train station and into the gathering darkness.


End file.
